Basketball

2017 / 2018

Men’s Captain: TBC

2016 / 2017

Men’s Captain: Cyrus Motashaw

2015 / 2016

Officer: Captain Charles Harrison

2014 / 2015

Officer: Captain Charles Harrison

The Queen’s College Basketball Club has gone from strength to strength in the past year. At the beginning of the year the Club was given official status by the Amalgamated Sports Committee, which provided a generous injection of funds enabling the purchase of a team kit and the cost of weekly training sessions in the Magdalen College School sports hall. The weekly sessions, open to anyone of any ability in the College, have been of paramount importance in the development of the Club, offering those who have never played the sport a chance to learn the basic skills needed whilst providing those more experienced players the opportunity to hone their talents.

The improvement in the team was confirmed by its results both in the league and in Cuppers. League highlights included a dominating victory over St Edmund Hall and a clutch buzzer-beater shot from Fraser ‘Splash-em’ Allardice that sealed a hard-earned victory against favourites New College. The real on-the-court highlights, however, came in Cuppers in which Queen’s was drawn in what the league organiser had dubbed ‘the group of death’, and death was presumed by all to be Queen’s inevitable fate. This was not to be. Queen’s stunned the packed out rafters of Iffley Road Sports Centre with an incredible performance against St Catherine’s/Balliol, a team comprised of seasoned blues regulars. Some sharp shooting from George ‘Posterizer’ Driscoll, a great hustle from Isaac Vivian, and impenetrable defensive work by ‘double J’ Cowling and Fitzsimons, secured the greatest upset in the basketball scene in recent memory. The next game saw Queen’s secure sufficient points to reach its first Cuppers quarter-final. Sadly, the end of the road was met in the form of an impervious Wadham side which thoroughly deserved to go through. Nonetheless the Club bowed out with heads held high, consoled by the invaluable lessons learned which will surely help the team progress further next year.

Overall it has been a very good year for basketball at Queen’s, a sport which has solidified its position within the College and seen a dramatic increase in participation. The Club will miss first team regular, Scott Melville, as he moves on to pastures new at the end of this year. Nevertheless, the Club looks forward to another successful year under the stewardship of captain-elect, Isaac Vivian, who will surely carry on the good work done by the captain and the committee over the past two years.